Woman Sentenced To 25 Years After Admitting To Poisoning Husband With Eye-drops

Lana Clayton pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in South Caroline for poisoning her husband by putting eye drops in his drinking water. The judge sentenced her to 25 years in jail.

Clayton, 53, admitted to police officers that she placed droplets of eye drop liquid in her husband's glass of water days before his death on 21 July 2018.

Her husband, Steve Clayton, was 64 and originally believed to have died of natural causes though medical examiners found a high level of tetrahydrozoline, which is found in eye drops. It constricts blood vessels and is believed to have been the cause of death.

It is not the first recorded incident though with the Claytons. In 2016, Lana shot her husband in the back of the head with a crossbow and told the authorities it was an accident.

She later admitted that she had shot him following an argument.

Lana also told the court the couple's problems had escalated through the years and impulsively put Visine in his drink.

She claimed it was to make him uncomfortable and sick but not to kill him.

Clayton was taken into custody on 31 August 2018 on charges of murder and malicious tampering with a drug product.

Murder convictions in South Carolina can invoke the death penalty, so she settled for the lesser charge of manslaughter. However, she got the business end of the sentence.

The prosecution insisted that Clayton, a nurse at the Veterans Affairs Department, wanted her husband to suffer and to teach him a lesson. The implication was she had a medical background and thus knew what she was doing.

Steve suffered for three days after drinking the poisoned water before he collapsed in their multi-million dollar home.

The defense claimed that she had survived a lot of abuse at the hands of her deceased husband. Lana told the court she wanted him to leave her alone.

The prosecution team stated she destroyed his will, as well, to make sure she would be the sole inheritor of his wealth after his death. The fact they were wealthy presented the possibility of motive in her actions.

Court records indicate that Clayton also left a suicide note attempting to commit suicide before her arrest. She took pills and turned on a gas stove but survived.

At the hearing, Steve Clayton's family and friends gave emotional testimony damming Lana. Lourdes Alvarez, his goddaughter, urged the judge not to be fooled by Lana and to punish her to the full extent possible.